TEREZIN PANEL—Roselyn Pappelbaum, chair of the San Diego Jewish Music Festival, introduces a panel in which Terezin survivors Lilli Greenberg (left) and Eve Gerstle (center) told of their experiences at the camp.  The panel was moderated by Eileen Wingard (right), whose sister, violinist Zina Schiff,  on the evening before performed music played in Terezin.   {Photo by Donald H. Harrison}

By Donald H. Harrison

LA JOLLA, Calif.— Eve Gerstle and Lilli Greenberg did not know each other back during World War II, but they had a lot in common. Both were German Jews, both spent part of the war in the Terezin concentration camp, both survived the war, both eventually came to live in the San Diego area—and both could credit  their survival on a hospital stay.

The two women shared their experiences during a panel discussion moderated this evening by Eileen Wingard at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center.  The panel was held in conjunction with a recital the evening before by violinist Zina Schiff (accompanied by pianist Mary Barranger) focusing on the music played at Terezin, as well as with an ongoing exhibit detailing the successful rescue of French Jews during World War II by Varian Fry, an American volunteering  for the European Rescue Committee.

Greenberg, the first to tell her experiences, lived in a city near the German-Dutch border.  Her aunt, who was a Dutch Jew, brought her over the border by disguising her as a boy inasmuch as she had a passport for her own young son.  If the policeman recognized the discrepancy between Greenberg's face and the one pictured in the passport, he didn't let on.  However, safety in Holland was short-lived.  In advance of the German invasion, the Dutch rounded up Jews and put them in an internment camp.  Greenberg said the Dutch hoped this might forestall a German invasion, but it didn't.  The Germans quickly took over administration of the camp.

Eventually, the family was transferred to Terezin, or as it was called in German, Theresienstadt.  Greenberg's father thereafter  was sent to Auschwitz and with him went all the family's records.  Bunk after bunk was emptied in the barracks where the Greenbergs were prisoners but no one came for her mother, sister or her because of the missing records. 

Greenberg said she later found out that her father for some reason was taken to a hospital at Auschwitz, and there the records remained for a portion  of the war. Such a fluke may have spared their lives, and a similar one may have saved another family, the Steins, who also were with them, virtually alone, in the barracks.

Whereas Terezin was known to many as the model "show camp" where Jewish inmates were relatively well treated by the Nazis, so that they could persuade delegations from Denmark and the International Red Cross that Jews were not being harmed, Greenberg said she was not in the part of Terezin where concerts, performances and other cultural displays were held.   Her job was in a factory, splitting mica, she said.

The closest she came to entertainment, she said, was one day when she saw some Jews participating in a soccer game, having as much fun as she could remember in the camp. But the memory that stays with her from Terezin was when she once visited a barracks where orphan children were kept.  A teenager then, she remembers being moved by the sight of a brother and sister, perhaps 4 and 5 years old, who were there together. It seemed as if there were a halo around them.  Not long after that, all the children were transported to death camps.

Another time, she knew her sister was with a group of Czech children who were trying to hide from a transport.  Trying to visit them, she was discovered by the camp commandant who demanded to know what she was doing in the area of that particular barracks.  Being frightened to death and having been trained to always obey authority, she almost blurted out the truth of why she was there—a confession that could have caused the immediate deaths of all the other girls.  Somehow, she held her tongue. The commandant for some reason took pity on her—perhaps, she speculated, she reminded him of someone in his own family. He  let her go, without having forced her to reveal the truth.

Greenberg was in Terezin at the time of liberation.  People have asked whether she remembers what feelings she had when liberation came—was it absolute joy (such as pictured by photographer Margaret Bourke-White in a current exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Art)?   She said that she replies "no," because  having been imprisoned from the age of 11 to the age of 17 , she felt dead inside, with no joy, no hope, and never a thought for the future.

It was only because of a visit to the hospital that Gerstle was sent with her family from their home in Wiesbaden to Terezin, instead of on another transport.  Expecting to be sent with children and other young adults on another transport, she arranged with a  doctor of her acquaintance to be scheduled for surgery the very day that other transport was to leave.  

At one point, when she was recovering from the surgery, she was sitting on the side of the bed.  Her doctor started screaming at the nurses not to permit her to sit up, that full bed rest was required—even though Gerstle knew she really was feeling better.  Later, he came into explain. The Gestapo had come to the hospital looking for her, but he had refused to turn her over, saying that her condition was so critical a week's worth of bed rest was required. 

Had the Gestapo seen her sitting up  in her room, she would have been put on the other transport—from which none of the passengers were known to have survived.   (After the war, Gerstle returned to Wiesbaden and testified to the doctor's good character, notwithstanding the fact that he had been a nominal member of the Nazi party.  Thereafter, American authorities permitted the doctor to retain his hospital post.)

Some friends who were sent to Terezin  on the same transport as Gerstle and her parents packed poison pills, just in case.  Before leaving, they were told that by paying money they could rent a decent apartment at Terezin; that life wouldn't be much worse than it had been  in  the "Jew House" they had been required to occupy in Wiesbaden. The couple gladly paid the money. Not long after they  learned that they had been duped, they committed suicide with the poison.

Gerstle said when prisoners first arrived at Terezin they were required to clean toilets, scrub floors, and do other undesirable jobs.  But gradually they were permitted to take less undesirable jobs as other new prisoners arrived. The best job she ever had at Terezin, before being deported to Auschwitz, was helping to serve food.

Her father was unable to adjust to camp conditions. The food was too dirty to eat, so he wouldn't eat.  He died after 4 1/2 months.  Her mother lasted another winter and spring before she died.  Gerstle was assigned to a barracks where the other women were Czech Jews.  As she spoke German, not Czech, they didn't trust her, in fact wouldn't even talk to her.  But before she died, her mother was able to teach her a few Czech words that she, herself, had learned while serving as a teacher in Czechoslovakia.  Once Gerstle extended herself by learning the Czech greetings and other simple phrases, the chill thawed.  Another survivor from that barracks and Gerstle have maintained a friendship ever since.

Gerstle met a musician who knew she had a good voice, and following an audition, she was accepted into the choir that Raphael Schachter was rehearsing for a performance of Verdi's Requiem.  However, all she got to do was rehearse.  Before the choir could perform, she was deported to Auschwitz.

Asked her impression of the conductor, she described him as "very rough."  He often told choir members, "Either you do what I say or out you go."

Her transport came after two previous narrow escapes from the Auschwitz transport. The first time, a musician was able to intervene in her behalf. A second time, she was excluded from the transport because her leg was in a cast and they needed workers.  But the third time her name came up, there was no way to avoid being sent to the infamous concentration camp, where most inmates were put to death.

A questioner asked about the food in Terezin.  Given the overcrowding, it probably was impossible to feed everyone, he speculated.  Compared to the food in Auschwitz, the food in Terezin was very good, Gerstle said. Of course, she added, no one at the time realized how good it really was.